Ep 2: Maya Witters - Former world cup judge on IFSC Controversies

Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host, Jinni, and I'm excited to introduce my guest for today, Maya Witters. As a volunteer, she has been up close and personal with everything IFSC behind the scenes related. She's volunteered as a judge at the Edinburgh World Cup and done athlete management at the Morioka and Hachioji World Cups. In this episode, we'll discuss what makes commentators, route setters, judges' jobs so difficult.

We'll get some insight about Team Japan and we'll dive into all the IFSC controversies, including how she managed to get blocked by the IFSC on social media. This is a spicy one, so I hope you enjoy this conversation with Maya. How are you? How are you doing today? I'm good, thank you. I just moved to Tokyo literally three days ago. Oh, my gosh. That's a lot of moving effort.

Yeah, I was in the north of Japan before that, so I've just moved down to Tokyo and I'm sitting on the floor of my new room in this really janky setup in order to avoid the noise of the aircon and stuff. But no, it's good. I've moved to Ogi-Kugo, which for people who know they're comp climbing, they'll realize that that's close to B-pump Ogi-Kugo, which is the world's most notorious training gym probably. So, yeah, I haven't been yet, but... Yeah, you've got to go. Yeah, that's my closest now.

So I guess I'll become a regular. But yeah, that'll be interesting for my ego. I know some of the Japanese World Cup team struggle on what they call V4. So I don't know what I'm going to climb, minus V5 or something. But you're going to get so good. Or very demoralized. I think that's also an option, but let's hope for very strong. I'll strive for very strong. Yeah, mental training is part of it, too. Yeah, I think that's possibly what I need the most, to be honest.

So it's probably a good thing. Yeah, it'll help there. Well, I hope it works out well. I would love to hear what your experience is like there once you've tried it out. I'll be sure to let you know. Yeah. And how long have you been climbing? I've been climbing about five years now, with the obvious COVID breaks in between. Climbing for me was kind of the first sport ever that I really, really got obsessed with. Before that, I was just not a very, like, exercisey person.

Like, as a kid, I tried lots of different things, but I was always more of a sort of artsy kid rather than sporty. So I think it made climbing more challenging in some ways, because I didn't really have any base strength or endurance or anything. But I think what really caught me about it was the sort of puzzle aspect. That's why I really got into bouldering. I'm much more of a boulder than a, you know, lead or top rope climbing.

I started off doing a top roping course to sort of challenge my fear of heights. And then I didn't know that bouldering was a thing. As far as I know, when I grew up, I'm from Belgium. And when I grew up, I don't think there was bouldering in my city, at least, because I remember doing, like, you know, some climbing at kids' parties and stuff like that. But I don't think there was bouldering. And so I did the top roping course and then discovered bouldering. I was like, oh, this is interesting.

So you got into it in Belgium and then you eventually moved to the UK? No, I got into it in the UK. So before I lived in Japan, I was in the UK for seven years. And yeah, that's where I did the course and where I got all into bouldering.

Yeah, and I guess that's also where you started your volunteering work for climbing. Yeah, I got really interested in comp climbing early on. I think comp climbing is part of the community aspect of climbing to an extent, right? That's also something that's really attractive about the sport. Like, it tends to be really supportive in the gyms. It's easy to talk to people. It's a really good way to make friends. And to me, I think comp climbing is to an extent an extension of that.

I think sports, you know, televised sports, especially, it helps, you know, people come together and have something to discuss. So I got really interested in the movement of comp climbing as well and in the creativity and what I perceive as freedom of it. But I sort of missed that community aspect because, you know, it's on YouTube and you're not watching it with people. So it can be a bit isolating. And then if you're just, you know, discussing stuff in the YouTube comments.

I think something that always surprised me about the YouTube section, the comment section of comp climbing is it's so supportive in real life. But then. Oh, God. Yeah. All the keyboard warriors come out, right? So it's interesting. And so I kind of missed that aspect of having, like, interesting level headed, you know, well thought out discussions with people about comp climbing. So I found some of that on a on a Discord group that I'm in.

And then I just also got interested in maybe trying to get more involved directly. And I heard through some friends that, especially youth competition climbing, they always need judges. So I got in touch with GB Climbing when they had a comp in London. And I went there and I just rolled into judging for the first time. It was really fun. And I did a few comps like that. And then they were like, we're doing a World Cup in Edinburgh, do you want to come?

And honestly, I thought they meant like, oh, you know, you can open the door or check people's tickets or something. It turned out they wanted a judge. And I was as surprised as anyone. So I ended up going to Edinburgh, becoming a World Cup judge for, you know, the lead World Cup there, which was a really interesting experience. And then literally about a week later, I was going to move to Japan. And so the person from GB Climbing got in touch with her counterpart in Japan.

I was like, hey, you've got another World Cup coming up. You know, this person is a World Cup judge. Do you want to like invite her or whatever? And so I ended up volunteering at a bunch of the Japanese comps as well in the last year, not as a judge, but as in the role of athlete management, so much more backstage, guarding the isolation zone and making sure, you know, people go out onto the stage at the right time and things like that.

And so I got to do that at the Morioka and Hachiochi World Cups, as well as at all of the Japanese local main comps. So the older Japan Cup, the Japan Cup and the combined cup. So, yeah, it's been a year of very interesting experiences. Yeah, so that is such like such a quick jump from like, oh, I started at a GB local youth comp to, oh, now I'm going directly to the World Cup. Was there anything else between that or was it just straight from one to the other?

I think, well, local youth comp, I think the thing I judged before was the youth, the National Youth Boulder competition. So it was, you know, a fairly sort of orderly event, a fairly official thing, not like your local gym comp, but it was a fairly big jump. And yeah, it's really interesting.

When I came to Japan, I was told I wasn't allowed to be a judge here, because actually in Japan, you have several levels of qualifications that you have to go through before you would be allowed to be a judge in UK. We don't have that system at the moment. So that was an interesting contrast as well. And even for the athlete management position, because it requires understanding the competition flow really well. They prefer having people in those positions who have a judging license.

But because I had done World Cup judging, they were like, I guess you can do this. So they let me do that. But it's it's a big contrast between the two, for sure.

Yeah, so one of the questions from the discord, someone named Sawika, was how are judges selected? Is there like a more regimented process than what you go through usually? Or especially in the Japan team, where you say that they have a bit more of a process for selecting judges? I think, you know, just like I was listening to your episode with Nikki from the other week, and just like he sort of explained that the roots root setter selection process is not superficial and quite vague.

I think the same probably applies to judges. I think also one thing that people generally who watch Club Climbing maybe don't realize is to what extent the IFSC is or isn't involved in the actual organization of World Cups. So the World Cups aren't organized by the IFSC per se. They're organized by national federations. These national federations, they apply, they sort of have proposals of what, like, we want to host this kind of World Cup. We can do it here or there.

The IFSC gets to do the decision making on the calendar and on what happens where. But it is ultimately the national federations that do the actual organizing on the ground. The IFSC only sends their media team, you know, MacGroom, who everyone knows, the commentator, but also their sort of behind the scenes team, media team, and then they send normally three people per competition, a jury president, a chief judge and a technical delegate. And those are licensed IFSC people.

So I'm not entirely clear on how the licensing process for that works. I'm not saying it's not transparent. It might be. I just haven't actually tried to look into that. So there are people who are qualified as, you know, technical delegates, which means that they sort of run a lot of the, as the name says, technical aspects of the competition. They help make decisions in case that there's rain delays, like we saw in Seoul.

And apparently they didn't have a technical delegate at that competition. I don't know why. But so that's that's unhelpful because your technical delegate would be pretty material in making those decisions. And they make sure, you know, all the rules are followed. And then there's a chief judge who sort of manages the team of judges and the team of judges will be national judges. So in Hachioji, we had a massive team of national judges, all Japanese people.

And in Japan, those are all people who have the A qualification. So or the B qualification, but they're in training. So that's how it works in Japan. Everyone who gets to judge a World Cup has to have those qualifications, which is sort of, I guess, a way to standardize judgment. But if there's any appeals, if there's any problems, it goes to the jury president, essentially. And the jury president will discuss with the national judges and with the chief judge.

And they'll come up, you know, they'll review video footage and they'll come up with a judgment together. But that's ultimately how that goes. So all the actual judging is done by the local federation. But obviously, it's done, you know, by multiple people per bolder or per brute to make sure that there's no, you know, no problems or no disagreements. If there's any issue whatsoever, it tends to go to the IFSC people.

And the chief judge is usually also the person who sort of liaises with team coaches. The team coaches are up front right behind the judges. And so the chief judge will probably be rowing around. If someone wants to make an appeal, they'll go and have a discussion with that person and sort of, you know, guide them through the process if they need guidance. Obviously, the experienced teams don't really need guidance, but they might, you know. Emotions are high usually at these points.

So the chief judge tends to then, you know, calm things down or say, OK, we'll review it or whatever. So that's how that goes in general. But on the national level, the way that those national judges are selected is obviously vastly different, as we've seen between, for example, Japan and the UK, because in the UK, we don't have a qualification system. A lot of the time, the people who judge youth competitions are just competitors' parents.

So we have a lot of pretty experienced judges in the UK, but they're all parents of competitors. So obviously, if it's a World Cup, you're not going to have, you know, family relationship judging. But yeah, it's vastly different. Also in the UK at the World Cup, all the judges, we were basically allowed to cheer on competitors and to, you know, to just cheer them on and say, come on or whatever. In Japan, absolutely not allowed because it might be confusing for the competitors.

So, you know, there is a difference in standard there. I don't want to say that, you know, the UK system is bad and I think everyone at the World Cup did a good job. And ultimately, you have the IFSC people there to resolve any dispute. So they would normally guarantee that, you know, judging is even across all World Cups. But there is no real standardisation across the world currently. And, you know, education for judges, for example.

I learned everything from just, you know, watching competitions. And then I went to, you know, do some judging and the people from Chibi Climbing were like, yeah, you know what you're doing. Can you come to Edinburgh, please? So, yeah, it's a big difference. So you didn't feel like totally out of place judging in Edinburgh? I felt somewhat out of place also because all of these systems behind it, there doesn't tend to be someone who says, by the way, this is how it works.

So you're going to have this and this and this happening. That doesn't happen. They just go, can you come? And then you're there and you just figure out what's going on and what to do. And so it's very, it's very experience based. But, you know, it was hugely interesting. There's just things where you think, why is this happening?

Like I walked into the venue in Edinburgh, I walked into Rathow, and I looked at the lead wall and I went, where are the bald covers? Why are there no bald covers? And they just kind of went, oh, yeah, we don't have them here. And I said, we're going to have bald stepping incidents. I just know it. Whenever you don't have bald covers, you have incidents. Because, you know, it's such a stupid thing.

Bald stepping, I understand why it's not allowed, but at the same time, as a climber, if you're just focusing on the sequence, it can be so difficult to see where your feet are at all time and making sure that you don't touch it. And of course, on the route that I judged in finals, we had that problem where Yoshiyuki touched a bald. I saw it happen. I said to the chief judge, you judged a bald, I can't judge if he used it, but you're going to get an appeal. And of course they got appeals.

And they reviewed the footage like a hundred times over and he got downgraded for it and lost out on a medal. So it's one of those things. And I talked to the jury president for that competition and I said, can you please, please make bald covers mandatory from next season? And he said, yeah, yeah, we're looking into it. I think we're going to make it mandatory. And they're still not mandatory this season. So we had incidents this year as well.

So it's one of those things that you think, this should be so simple, but it's not in place yet. I don't know if it's just that they're difficult to get in some places or what it is or if it's too expensive or whatever. I can't imagine them being that expensive, to be honest. But it's one of those things where you just think it should be so easy to solve. And it's heartbreaking as a judge, you don't ever want to demote someone for stepping on a bolt.

Like, obviously it's really unpleasant thing to have to do. But yeah, it happened. So, yeah, and people get quite upset about it. People get understandably very upset about it. And I think Nikki touched upon this as well when he said, you know, one thing that's also lacking in climbing is context. Very often in competition climbing, like you have an appeal happen.

And then at the end of the broadcast, you actually don't know if the appeals gone through or not. There usually isn't very good communication between the judges and the commentating team. Often they're not even necessarily within speaking distance of each other. They're often off to the side or in the back or even sometimes behind the wall and just watching the screens. So that communication tends to not be there.

So, you know, people often complain, oh, the commentator doesn't even know what's going on, whatever. And, you know, again, keyboard warriors coming out to complain about something that they don't know the circumstances of, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this, to, you know, sort of clarify some of the circumstances that are there. But I think that is a problem. Like, if you don't have a way of giving that context to viewers, it makes sports very difficult to watch.

So, you know, there's definitely improvements to be made there. Yeah, it's so hard to know, like, what's going on. And people get so much hate online for it, I think, especially like Matt Krum gets a lot of hate on it. I wish I could have him on the podcast one day to ask him what his thoughts are and what he's experiencing when he's actually commentating. Yeah, I feel bad for Matt, to be honest, because I think he's trying so hard. He has a really difficult job. He has to do a lot of traveling.

It's very exhausting. And, you know, the thing people always get him on is his pronunciation of climbers names, especially, you know, foreign climbers. But honestly, you know, I've I've looked at lists of climbers names in one. I don't even know where to begin. And it's not like he doesn't try. I've spoken to him numerous times. I've actually sent him voice messages in the past, like teaching him the pronunciation of Japanese names. That's so funny.

Yeah. So he really tries, but he's dyslexic and it's just and he's British. You know, that doesn't help either, I think. So it's really, really hard to get all of them perfectly correct. And I think, you know, there are obvious points where he could improve, but he also has improved a lot in his few years now as a commentator on the circuit, I think there's been vast improvements in the way he commentates. And, you know, that's hopefully that'll just continue. And he brings the psych.

He's, you know, he's psyched about talking to climbers or watching climbing. So I think that's important as well, especially now with a climber, usually as a co-commentator, I think it works quite well. So, yeah, but there are obvious aspects that can be improved. And some of that is just down to him, you know, people not communicating to him.

He told me last time in Hachioji that, you know, he tries to always go to the technical delegate before the comp and say, oh, you know, can you please, if something happens, can you write me a little note or, you know, come to me or, you know, whatever it is, but do something so that I can tell the viewers. And obviously, in some competitions, that's easier than in others because the technical delegate is really busy, you know.

They're busy with those judgments and with appeasing coaches and climbers. And so, you know, communicating with the commentator doesn't always come first. And at the same time, you know, that commentator has to do so many things at once. He has to watch the climbing, but also often they don't see the whole life. So they also only have the footage that gets fed through to YouTube, which isn't, as we know, always the best footage.

He has to, sometimes if there's a moment where he wants a replay, he needs to signal that to his team so that they can set up the replay. He has to try and, you know, get people's attention if he needs experience on anything. So it's a very difficult job. And I think, you know, people don't appreciate it enough. And it's very easy to get angry about things online. And I understand because I think I used to, to an extent, be one of those people.

I don't think I was ever like a horrible keyboard warrior. I like to think that I try to be nuanced whenever I talk about things even online. But I used to just, you know, get mad at the IFSC for whatever, in my opinion, idiotic judgment that they made or whatever. But then once you get in... Lack of organization. Yeah, lack of organization or, you know, it's actually funny.

I once got blocked off of all social media by the IFSC. Right, I wanted to touch on that. Because I've been critical of the Eurosport deal, you know, the deal where in Europe it's now impossible without a VPN to watch the broadcasts for free because it's being broadcast on Eurosport. And they announced this as like, you know, an amazing thing for the sport that was going to grow with the viewership and stuff.

And a lot of people were angry about it just for reasons of not being able to watch it for free anymore. But I think, you know, there's also a huge discussion point of, is this actually a good deal? Is this going to grow the viewership? Because Eurosport, first of all, had commentators who knew nothing about climbing. So it was horrible to watch. And they ended up usually not broadcasting semifinals at all, or maybe online only.

And even finals, you know, it was very low down the list for them in terms of priority. If there was any other sports that might attract more viewers, they would broadcast that instead. So even finals weren't always broadcast live. And obviously, if you're having them in Asia, the time zone is weird anyway. So there were lots of discussion points about, is this actually good for the sport? And also, what are you doing with the money that comes in? I think that's a fair point.

Like, as the IFSC, you're getting broadcasting money. What are you doing with it? Are you investing it back into the sports? Is it going into the professionalization of this sport? Is it going into development of route setters? Is it going into prize money? Spoiler alert, it's not. But they didn't communicate anything about this. So I was quite critical of this. And I put a few platforms because I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all those things.

So on a few of those platforms, I posted a response to them saying, you know, I don't think this is good for the sport. And they ended up blocking me off of all social media. And I just, I was like, what is happening? This is crazy. This is like some weird dictatorship level censorship. So I sent them an email as nicely as I could muster being like, excuse me, what the actual fuck are you doing? And they were like, oh, we thought you were spamming. But okay, we'll unblock you, I guess.

And you know, that was like early last year. And then months later, I ended up being a judge at the World Cup. So it was this really weird, awkward, awkward thing.

And it's sometimes very difficult to know who's making those decisions because the FSC also is a very, I don't know if decentralized is the right word, but you know, people are spread over various continents. So those, the technical delegate, the jury president, the chief judge, those people, they're different at every comp because those are just people who have normal day jobs who do this as like an extra thing. So they only go to like maybe three, four big comps a year in those capacities.

So are they the IFSC? They're part of the IFSC, but they're not necessarily the part of the IFSC that makes those decisions. Because in Hachioji, I sort of ended up running around with the IFSC people quite a lot because you know, they needed a fair bit of interpreting between English and Japanese. So I ended up running around with them quite a lot and talking to them. And they were like, I told them this story and they found it very, very weird.

And you know, they were like, okay, that's not good. So who is making these decisions? It's often quite difficult to know like who at the IFSC is actually deciding that, you know, blocking all discussion on social media is a good thing. It doesn't seem like there's a big sort of system behind it. And when I emailed their head of communications essentially to say, hey, can you please unblock me?

We had a bit of discussion and I said, well, you know, I just think there needs to be discussion there needs to be an open discussion about these kinds of things. And if we if we as a community can't have discussions about, you know, what's good for this sport, then it's very much, you know, a sort of dictatorish point of view from which the IFSC is deciding all of this, because it doesn't seem like they're listening to their athletes very much.

There was a lot of athletes who didn't like this at all. It doesn't seem like they're listening to their community because you're blocking them of social media when they try to bring up points. So what's going into this discussion? And guys sort of said, well, if you want to have discussions with the IFSC, social media isn't the right way to do it, because we just send like a report every three months to the top of the IFSC to tell them what's happening on social media.

So, you know, I think obviously, again, people online, people who are just viewing from the other side of YouTube, they often don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So I'm not saying, you know, you should just listen to the majority opinion. But listening in some way might be a good thing. Posturing discussion might be a good thing, and it helps to engage viewers, because I

think right now the IFSC really has a PR problem, basically. Oh, for sure. You know, everyone kind of hates them because they don't explain why they make decisions. It's very untransparent. Communication is just not very good, to be honest. And they never respond to points of criticism. They seem to like what they did with locking me off their social media accounts. They seem to do a lot of censoring. Recently this has come up around the BMI and Redes discussion.

For those who don't know, at the beginning of the Innsbruck IFSC World Cup Finals live streams, they didn't know that the microphone was already recording, and the co-commentator Alana Yip asked Matt Groom if he could ask her a question about what she would like to see changed within the IFSC so that she could talk about the lack of BMI testing.

They cut out Alana's message, and then recently, you know, the chief, two of the main medical doctors on the medical board of the IFSC resigned because they said, well, we've been bringing this up for years, there's no action being taken. And this obviously helped bring the message to come into attention again. So this was going around on social media quite a bit.

And then apparently, a climber started this campaign making t-shirts that say, you know, IFSC please listen, and planning to have a lot of people wear those in Bern at the world championships next week. And from what I've seen on social media, it turns out that the IFSC threatened that person with a lawsuit and tried to shut them down.

So a lot of weird stuff going on that I just don't think they're helping themselves really in the way they communicate or don't communicate to make this sport, you know, more enjoyable, more accessible for viewers and climbers. Because I think a lot of athletes also share this opinion saying that, you know, they don't just not listen to viewers, but they don't listen to athletes very well either.

So you know, if as a sports body, you're not listening to anyone who's actually involved in doing your sports, what are you doing? And you know, I don't want to just be critical. I think there has been improvements in some of the communication in the last season. I think they're doing a bit better with posting on social media and with trying to engage and create a story to an extent.

But if you suppress discussion every time something slightly controversial happens, then you know, you're undoing your own efforts, I think. Yeah. Do you know if they have like a social media team? Or is there like, I don't know, do they have any way of reaching out properly? I think their social media team is one person. I'm not sure, but I think that it's one person mostly running it. And yeah, I don't know if they have much of a policy behind it, to be honest.

Or if they have a policy, it doesn't necessarily seem well informed or, you know, as someone who does communications myself, I don't think it's the best communication policy that they have in place for their own reputation, as well as for, you know, engaging people and

engaging. Yeah, clearly. But going back to what you mentioned about the Eurosport deal and how athletes were responding to it, I guess, how does it affect athletes? Also after it's been like a year or so since this has happened, has there been any updates on whether it's been actually good for them or anyone? No, I think I had a brief discussion with Sasha Gale about this at one point where at the time she said, well, I don't really get why people are so upset about this.

If we get to be on television, that's good for us, right? And you know, I tried to make the argument that it just depends if you're gaining or losing viewers essentially, because ultimately climbing is booming, it's getting much bigger, but it's not fully mainstream yet. And it's not always the easiest to understand. Like the rules aren't, the details of the rules aren't always easy to understand.

And I think when you have a sport like that, it's very difficult to just get viewership from people randomly happening upon it. So the big question is, you know, if you put this on television right now, are you actually gaining viewers or are you losing them? Because you know, if you look at people, well, and again, communicating, that's a lot of them saying, well, I'm not watching anymore because I'm not paying for it.

Especially because there are also repeated complaints even from the people who normally like to watch it that, you know, the footage isn't very good. The camera work, you know, often zooms in when we actually need to see the whole climber. It's not terribly well coordinated. Commentating isn't always the best. Again, there's this communication issue and when there's an appeal, we don't necessarily know what's going on.

So those things are very difficult, I think, if you want to just attract viewers who happen upon your sport. I think that's unlikely to happen at this point, unless you, you know, manage to improve on a bunch of those points, but also manage to sort of have better PR for climbing in general as a federation, as a sport. You know, you need stories, I think, in sports in order for people to stay engaged and inspired.

And that's one thing that's been really difficult, I think, this season is because we have the Olympic qualifying coming up. So many athletes have been skipping, skipping the World Cups. And it makes it really difficult to find the narrative line throughout the season. It's not like there's not really been a battle for the overall title. And I think that's just, you know, it makes it really, really difficult for people to stay interested, to stay engaged.

Also, I think Nikki mentioned this in his interview about, you know, climbing personalities and who are the big personalities? Who would you trust to explain climbing to people who don't know climbing? And that's, I think, also a point where, you know, a federation can do so much work. And again, they've been sort of doing stuff this season.

They've had like their golden moment for every comp where they've highlighted things on social media and, you know, they try to sort of bring out those things. They've tried to do some more interviews with people, which I think is an improvement. And I think it's a good evolution, but there's a lot more work to be done. And you know, I think realistically, if you want to do it well, you probably need a bigger social media team. You need more people involved.

You need probably some good PR people who know, you know, where to help you. And you need to just be more transparent as a federation. I think that's why, you know, an initiative like this podcast is really great because it helps us spread some insight into behind the scenes of comp climbing. However limited, however limited to, you know, my experience or the things that I know, which isn't very much. But you know, why don't we get to see more of that from the IFSC?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm really hoping to sort of fill that gap because I just wish that we could learn more about the athletes or learn more about behind the scenes, just like have footage that we can see. So I am really hoping to fill that gap. And maybe one day they'll be like, hey, do you want to interview people as part of the IFSC? No, that'd be amazing. Yeah. I think, you know, this sport, we're in the middle of an evolution of professionalization with this sport.

And being in the middle of an evolution like that means it's a really interesting time. There's lots of change happening. There's lots of new things all the time. But it also has a lot of challenges. You know, it means that we'll run into problems. We'll run into issues where people disagree. And also one of the big problems, I think, is that the professionalization of the sport

isn't happening at the same rate everywhere. So it's not happening at the same rate in different countries, within different national federations. It's not necessarily happening at the same rate within the different disciplines of the sport or within, you know, the management side and the route setting side and all of those different things. And that makes it really tricky because it means that there's different levels of money going around in different places in different countries.

It means that it's really difficult to leave stuff up to national federations when national federations aren't really an established thing everywhere. So I think that brings along a lot of challenges. And again, that makes it interesting, but it means that, you know, you just run into issues and you can see it in so many different things. I think, you know, there's countries where there's a statute where athletes can be employed by the army.

And that means that they just have an income that comes from the army and they don't have to, you know, have day jobs necessarily or rely on sponsors in order to... And what countries? What countries are those? I know that this is the case in France and Slovenia. I don't know in which other countries, but I know that this is a system that some countries have. And then there's some countries where there isn't such a support system.

And so athletes really have to rely on prize money or on sponsorships. And that makes it really hard in a country like Japan. You know, you can see a vast difference. There are so many talented athletes, but there's a vast difference in sort of the security levels that they have. There's some big names like Mio Nanaka or, you know, Tomoe Narasaki or people like that who are very well established. They're, you know, they go on television here.

They're pretty well-known faces by now, sponsored by really big brands, especially Miho, you know, with Adidas, Beats sponsorship, Big Yogurt brand sponsoring her. So, you know, she's very secure in that. And then there's lots of other really talented climbers who go to university and, you know, sort of have this student athlete statute, which I think kind of helps them sort of balancing both, but doesn't do much in terms of financial support. And so they all work at climbing gyms.

They work as route setters. And so they have to somehow balance training, going to all these World Cups and their day job and studying. And it's just not a level playing field that way. So there is a big question there of, you know, where is the money? Is there money in the different countries for all the athletes? We have seen in the past, you know, athletes crowdfunding in order to be able to even go to the World Cups because it's expensive.

And if your federation doesn't have the budget to send X amount of climbers to a World Cup, but you still want to go, then you have to sell fund. I think this is still the case. We saw it for, I think we saw it this season for some of the Indonesian boulders because their speed team is really well established, but their boulder and lead climbers aren't as well known yet. They have twins who compete and, you know, they've been crowdfunding to be able to go to the big events.

I know the physio for Team Australia had to crowdfund because the federation didn't have budget to send a physio. Oh my God. So you know, these are things that are going to change and hopefully get better. But as we are in that process of evolution, there's lots of interesting little bits of friction, I guess you could call it.

Yeah. I mean, money must be a pretty big problem to overcome in this sport. Because I mean, even if you win, the prize money is pretty small, isn't it? Oh, it's low. Yeah, it's really low. And I think it's been reduced recently as well. So you know, and I just think also just the fact looking at this past season of how many people have been skipping comps, I think that tells you how low worth the prize money is because they've all been sort of skipping those comps.

And it also tells you that there isn't much prize money in gaining the overall title because no one's been competing for the overall title. It doesn't seem like anyone's been interested in it at all. So if the athletes aren't even interested in it, how can we as viewers ever be interested in it? Also, it doesn't really get mentioned throughout the season, right? It's the last comp of the season. Oh, by the way, we also have the overall podium and someone won. Right.

Yeah, they never talk about it. No. So there's a lot of work to be done in developing storylines across seasons and keeping viewers engaged. And it is also tricky with things being in different time zones. You can't always watch everything live anyway. But giving people a reason to rewatch your comp and making them really want to see what happened, I think there's a lot of work to be done there. Yeah. Do you know what the prize money is for gold, silver, bronze?

And is there a separate prize money for winning the overall season? I don't know. I don't know the actual amount. I know that it's not very high. But I don't think I've tried to look for it, but I don't think it's officially publicized at least publicly on the IFSC website at the moment. But yeah, I think it's, you know, not above $5,000 probably for winning a World Cup. I think it's possibly well below that.

I guess in Japan at least, some athletes, you say make their money from rapsiding, sponsorships if you're really big, I guess. Is that part of the reason maybe why in Team Japan there's so much turbulence between who's rising and who just kind of falls out and we don't ever hear from them again? I think it's part of the reason why probably.

I think there's a lot of, the level of professionalization in this country is quite high compared to most countries or especially compared, you know, the only other one that I have experience with is UK and Japan is much more professional in the way, you know, the comp system here is set up. There's way more regional competitions and local competitions that get official judges in.

So actually people here who do the judging qualification, they often have judging duties every other weekend, basically going around to, you know, prefectural competitions, youth competitions. So there's a volume of comp climbing here that allows for that professionalization, but also that volume of comp climbing means you have a vast field of really strong climbers.

And you know, the best way that Team Japan is found to select their international representatives every year is by a comp at the start of the season. That's the Boulder Japan Cup, the League Japan Cup, the combined cup, the speed cup. Normally their team for the year is selected at that competition, which means you have one shot. So unless you already have guaranteed representation because the top 10, world top 10 every year, they automatically get to go to all the world cups.

So unless you're in the top 10 for this year with Team Japan, you have to basically, you know, do your best and try and get into finals for those competitions at the start of the season every year. And if you don't make it, then you're not in the selection for the year. And you have to, you know, just stick with national competitions. And so everything hinges on one competition, which is a tricky thing.

For example, last year we saw that Tomoa had a bit of a disaster in his semi-finals for the League Cup. I think he slipped really no on one route and then on the other route he had a clipping problem. And this was in qualification because it was two routes. He skipped the first clip accidentally. And so he didn't even make it to semis. And so he wasn't in the lead team last year, which obviously, you know, for him was a big problem looking at, you know, combined training and stuff.

And so he worked really hard to improve that this year. But yeah, it's obviously somewhat down to luck as well when it's all down to one competition for the team selection. And I think Japan is the only country that has this problem really at the moment. Maybe USA and France have big enough teams that they have to do some selecting as well. But Japan is the biggest one where, you know, you see people in one year and then out the next year.

But there is obviously also, you know, a problem there of the people who are already at the top and who are self-sufficient, who can, you know, rely on sponsors and don't need to have day jobs. They have way more time to train. They probably have money for a coach. They have access to better training facilities. You know, I mean, Tomoa, Tomoa Narasaki and Akiyō Noguchi have their own gym that was funded by private money.

That's like one of the best training facilities in the country, but, you know, it's private. So it's just down to who they invite. So access is a big problem and consistency is a big problem because if you need to constantly, you know, scramble to have enough money or to also focus on your studies or whatever, then I think it's much more difficult to put in a consistent performance.

Definitely. Yeah. And so you've been pretty up close and personal with Team Japan now, even despite like whatever money issues there are. How do you think from their training regimen, what makes them so dominant in the sport compared to other countries? You know, the level of professionalization that we were talking about is a factor to an extent. They have a big history. They have a lot of depth of field, which means, you know, there's a lot of examples that young climbers could look up to.

They have a history in the sport, which always helps. It's interesting sometimes because they don't necessarily have the best training facilities. Obviously, you know, I'm near B-Pump here. B-Pump is one of the, meant to be one of the world's best training gyms where also, you know, the grading has nothing to do with real life grading. And I don't know if that's just some sort of idea of, oh, if we make the grades insanely hard then people will want to chase them.

I don't know if that's, you know, part of the reasoning. But for example, lead walls, there really aren't that many in the country. And there's a big access problem when it comes to training for lead climbing. Just because there is a lack of space, it's difficult to find buildings that are high enough. So there's a lot of bouldering gyms, but not that much lead climbing.

So to an extent, it's surprising that, you know, Team Japan are that strong in lead as well even though there is that access problem. So sometimes it's really difficult to tell why they are so strong. They also tend to not train as a team because they have such a big team. Everyone lives different parts of the country.

So unless there's a training camp organized somewhere, I think, you know, they'll do training camps maybe a few times a year, often abroad as well, for the representative team of that year. So I think they had a training camp a few weeks ago in Innsbruck, for example. So unless it's that kind of an event, they don't tend to train as a team. They all have their own local gyms. Some of them have their own coaches.

So there are obviously team coaches for Team Japan, but they're mostly coaches, you know, during the competition and people will have their own, you know, private coaching separately from that. That's probably self-funded as well. So I can't tell you what the secret is really. They're just, you know, they're very motivated to train and they work really hard and they have a good history. They have a pretty professional, you know, organization. But other than that, I don't know where the magic is.

Yeah, I mean, I would think even if you don't have a big, nice lead training facility, I hear a lot of athletes just kind of use the spray wall and do endurance training on that. But I'm sure it is a bit different. So not sure. Yeah, I'm sure there's plenty of ways to do endurance training, but I think one of the things that you see, for example, we saw it in Morioka.

We had some athletes who it was their first time ever at a World Cup, but it was also the first time anyone from their country was at a World Cup. And even if, you know, you've been watching the sport and you might be the top in your country, if you've never been able to actually try out at that level, then it can be really, really difficult to actually judge it accurately.

And we had a girl from Mongolia, Morioka, and I just felt really bad for her because she got zero on all of the boulders and then she fell off hold four on the lead wall or something. And that doesn't mean she's, you know, not a good climber. She's probably very strong in her country. And you know that these routes tend to be around what, 8b plus or something. So maybe she climbs 8b plus. It's well possible, but it's such a different style as well, right?

Comp climbing, if there isn't really comp climbing in your country and there's no setting for comp climbing, then how are you going to practice your dynamic moves? And you might not be at all familiar with the hold sets. You know, the holds are so different, modern comp climbing holds, big macros, big volumes. It's hugely different from climbing on just, you know, little old fashioned crimps or whatever. So yeah, there's a big difference there.

There's a big gap that I think unless you've experienced that level and you have some of that infrastructure in your country and you have it available, it's going to be very, very difficult to actually compete at that level. Maybe that's part of why Team Japan is so strong, at least in bouldering, because they have B-Pump. That's always challenging even their top athletes. I think that's part of it. Obviously B-Pump also isn't the only gym in the country that has that high level of setting.

There's lots of gyms. Also, I think Japan has a fairly high number of IFSC qualified route setters, or at least a few that you see at a lot of the World Cups or other big international competitions. They have quite a lot of really, really good route setters who go and set internationally and then also set at local gyms and who will set specific events or training moves at B-Pump or even privately. I think, you know, Tomoa Narasaki often just invites good route setters to his gym to set for him.

So if you have that access to a really high level of setting, as an athlete I think that is a huge boost for your training potential because then you know you can actually measure your strength on the sort of stuff that you're going to encounter at World Cups, at the world level. Whereas, you know, if you're just training in some old basement gym somewhere in a far away quarter of the country, it's just a little harder. You can get as strong as you like.

But as we've seen, as Nikki also discussed, you know, climbing isn't just about being very strong because if it would be, it'd be impossible to distinguish levels, the level between people. And, you know, people in, again, in the comment sections always love to go, oh, this is not real climbing. It's parkour. People are jumping around.

And it's just, you know, you try setting a boulder that doesn't have any of those elements, but that still lets you distinguish the level between the world's strongest climbers. Because I can tell you, on a strength level, they're all very close together. So if you don't have any learned, like, roofs that require learning on the spot, then you're just going to either get all flashes or all, you know, zeros across the board.

And then everyone will just complain about the separation in the scores instead. Exactly. So you can't really win if you complain about one and the other. So I think, you know, it must be so hard for route setters. They get so much hate. Anytime they try anything new, they get hate. You know, in Hachioji, we had that really cool jump into a palm press that no one got in the finals, and then everyone was like, oh, bad setting in finals, like, no one got the boulder.

And then, you know, it just turns out this is a move nobody had seen. And once Meiji was told the beta, he just got on it and did it in trainers. And so is that bad route setting? No, I don't think it is because you're setting a season opener, so you're trying to set stuff that's interesting, stuff that maybe they haven't seen before, stuff that's tricky. And you know, the margins between no one getting it and just one person getting it are really, really thin.

And whether that's a route reading thing or just, you know, conditions play a big role, whether it's hot or cold. Sometimes, especially when you're setting outside, you know, a lot of the competitions happen outdoors. It's really difficult because temperatures can swing by like 20 degrees Celsius from one day to the next. And it does, it really does affect how easy or hard it is to climb something at that level.

Yeah. So it's such a hard job, and they get so much hate and also very little sort of respect from people when they do it right or when things go their way. So you know, I'm honestly pretty much impressed that anyone still wants to do the job, given how as a community we sort of tend to vilify these people who are really, really essential to comp climbing and to climbing in general.

Like, okay, unless you only climb outdoors, if you didn't have route setters, then you can't train, you know, you can't go to a gym, you can't. So these people are really essential and they deserve a lot more recognition and respect, I think. For sure. Yeah, well put. Going back to the Japanese team, someone on the Discord had a question about their experience

with outdoor climbing. They asked, how much experience do the Japanese comp climbers have outdoors? From the West, we rarely hear about their outdoor achievements, despite Japan being quite famous for its outdoor climbing. Yeah, I think there's a lot of individual variety. I think there's quite a lot of climbers in Japan who don't maybe climb outdoors that much. So exclusive gym beasts like you, which might to an extent help with how specialized they are and how good they are at comp climbing.

At the same time, there's people who climb at insane levels outdoors here, but they don't tend to be the same people who comp climb. So we have Sachi Ama, who is a former competition climber who now exclusively puts up new lines outdoors. He does a lot of lead and trad. He goes to bolt new places. So he climbs really hard. We have a few people like that who are former World Cup climbers who've now moved to outdoor climbing.

And then of course we have Team Rockdoll, who are a sort of outfit of three or four really, really strong climbers who exclusively climb outdoors. Although, I mean, not exclusively, their big achievements are outdoors, but they're all all they're also all route setters, I think. So they do indoor setting as well. But they're boulders and they go and just put up insane lines outdoors. So we saw Floating last year, V17, is a line that one of them put up.

And I think they've just got back from Rocklands in South Africa where they've crushed a whole bunch of really hard boulders. So you do have you have really good outdoor climbing in this country and you have people who are extremely strong. I think one thing that's tricky about outdoor climbing in this country is the season for it is quite short. It's completely impossible right now in summer. Like it's 35 degrees Celsius outside. I don't have any idea what that is in Fahrenheit. I'm sorry.

But it's hot, but it's also extremely humid. Like humidity levels tend to go around 70%. So you just like slip straight off anything. There's no way you can climb outdoors right now. And so for high performance climbing, it almost has to be in winter, but then it can't snow and it can't rain. So it is pretty tricky to find the right conditions to do outdoor climbing in this country because spring and autumn are fairly warm and can be wet as well.

So for high performance outdoor climbing, that also isn't ideal. You want it to be colder. So I think that's probably one of the reasons that makes it quite challenging in this country. It's not like Fontainebleau where you can have decent conditions, probably for three out of four seasons of the year. And also access, I guess, a lot of these areas. There's a fair few like reasonably developed areas, but I think a lot of them are inaccessible if you don't have a car.

So that makes it tricky as well. Other than that, I had a few IFSC controversies that I wanted to touch on. I feel like I've already criticized them so much. A bit. But these aren't so much about the IFSC, just rather things that have happened and things that you might have mentioned earlier. So the first one was also a Discord question.

Which one was this? So at the Chamonix comp, thoughts on Chaeyoung being DQ'd for miss clipping or skipping the clip. I think, yeah, you also mentioned Tomoa had done that. This person said, I might be misremembering, but I thought Sean McCall Z clipped in 2019 but was able to keep climbing. I know it's not quite the same, but it feels weird if you can get disqualified for one clipping error, but not another. Do you know the rules on this?

Yeah. So I was really taken aback by how militantly people were wrong in the governance. How militantly people were arguing for this really stupid, it needs to be changed, blah, blah, blah. The rule is there for safety. Because first and foremost safety, but also fairness. Fairness because if you skip a clip, clipping takes energy. So if you skip a clip and you can keep climbing, then that would incentivize people to skip clips which is dangerous.

Because they're literally there to make sure people don't ground fall while they're putting up a real high level climbing performance on the wall. You prefer them not to die. Now in I would say 99% of cases if someone skipped a clip, going back to fix it would be dangerous because going back to fix it, even if you've already clipped a higher point so you're not going to ground fall, but it increases your chances of falling on your own rope. Also down climbing and 8b plus is insanely hard.

So the chances of it going well are low anyway. But again it increases your chances of getting tangled in your own rope, of taking a difficult fall. It's hard for the b-layer to know what to do with the slack. And also if as a judge you would have to decide in the moment whether it's safe or not for the climber to down climb and go and re-clip, that puts a lot of strain on a judge because in this split second, you know, you can't make the climber weight all the wall.

So it would be down to a judge's decision to decide whether or not it was safe to go and re-clip. So instead of that we have a very clear and simple rule which is clip all the clips in order and it means that you take away any confusion, you take away any personal opinion and you have a really clear and simple rule that tells climbers what to do and they're aware of this.

Now in the specific case of Jaehyun Seo, you know, skipping that clip and immediately fixing it from the same position, there's no danger. But again, if you're gonna change the rule to make it more arbitrary, you're just opening the door to more discussion and to more fuzziness and more difficulty I think. So that rule is there for safety and for fairness. It's very clear.

There are the clearest rules in climbing because we already have quite a lot of things that are down to the judge's opinion like did they get the plus or not, like did they control the zone or not, like legit starting positions. All of those things are already down to discussion. So why on earth would you want to make more rules down to people's personal judgment?

I think it makes no sense at all and of course if your favorite, you know, in a moment of lack of focus or whatever or just bad luck skips a clip. I know it's heartbreaking. Like nobody wants to see it. That's why everyone got so angry. The incident that Nikki mentioned when, you know, Ondra stepped on the bolt and, you know, missed his Olympic ticket at that point. You know, that's exactly why we need bolt covers because that makes the rule much clearer.

It doesn't make it down to the judge's decision of did they use it or not because if you just brush a bolt it's fine but the judge has to decide whether you use the bolt or not and whether you got any aid from it. And then, you know, so that again, it makes it down to people's decision. If we just have bolt covers then it's easy because anyone can step on the bolt cover and we've decided that that doesn't help them so they can step on it.

So we need rules like that in climbing where it clarifies things rather than making it more difficult. So arguing that the rules are stupid and need to be changed just because your favorite, you know, lost out on maybe a chance of a gold medal in that competition. I just think people need to be a little bit more reasonable than that and kind of think about the actual consequences of what they're proposing. And so Z clipping is okay then?

Z clipping is okay because it's not dangerous to fix essentially because you just need to clip the order of things that you did. And it was at this point that she realized she messed up. Right, dear viewers, I am just cutting in for myself because I realized I did a bad job explaining the difference between Z clipping and clipping out of sequence. So the big difference is when you're clipping out of sequence you need to down climb in order to fix the clip.

As I said in 99% of cases, if you're Z clipping you don't need to down climb because all you need to do is unclip the top clip and reclip it with the correct end of the rope. So it's not the same situation and that's why one is deemed safe by the rules and the other isn't deemed safe. One involves down climbing which might involve falling on your own rope which is just really difficult to do on an 8b plus anyway.

The other one doesn't involve any down climbing at all and can be fixed on the spot. So that's why you have that difference. And also it's not as much down to judgement then. It's immediately clear that you Z clipped in. So I think the rule makes sense. I think if you think oh Z clipping versus clipping in order, that's a weird rule, then I think the rule that needs to change is that Z clipping is allowed, not the other way around.

I kind of think the weird rule in this case is the fact that you're allowed to go and correct Z clipping. So I just think if the rules are clear and easy to follow, keep them that way please. More confusing rules is the last thing we need in climbing. Yeah, okay.

Totally fair. That makes sense. Okay, well let's try to end on a lighter note I guess. A few questions from the Discord and well first I was wondering if you have any like insights or anecdotes from Team Japan? Any like athlete quirks that you can think of? Or one time I think you had mentioned that there's this like pull up guy in Team Japan? I don't really know what that means but if you know what that means.

No. I don't know, again everyone is different, everyone has different ways that they approach warming up and I think this is one for me is one of the interesting things of being in athlete management at these World Cups is you get to see what goes on behind the scenes, you get to see how an isolation zone works, you get to see how athletes warm up, how they mentally approach a competition, you know some of them are very boisterous and outgoing, some of them really sort of just sit in a corner.

Aymori for example tends to read manga when, because usually she climbs last because she's you know the strongest so she has to wait in isolation for a very long time and very often she's in the corner reading manga because obviously in isolation you know athletes don't have access to the internet. So yeah, how do people keep themselves busy, stuff like that, that's quite interesting to see and you know some of them are surprisingly nervous.

Tomo Narasaki is always surprisingly nervous even though he's so experienced and you know he sort of has this image of being you know tough guy maybe but he's always like pacing about in isolation zone and like if there's other Japanese athletes there sort of trying to make conversation and so those kinds of things are really interesting to watch.

Obviously the downside of being in athlete management is you don't actually get to see the climbing because you're behind the stage but yeah it's fun to see people sort of and see how their personalities come out.

For example as well Ayala Kurem from Team Israel, she's really really funny when she's in ISO so at the Hachioji finals she was constantly listening to music and she was like air drumming and dancing and just like rocking out which I guess is her way of channeling her nerves and you know right up until she would have to go out on stage she'd be like just vibing and then you know go on and come back and just start.

So because with these things because especially in finals as athlete management you're guided by the broadcasting schedule so there'll be one person there with a radio who gets told the timing of when athletes have to go out they'll get like a 10 second warning and a five second warning things like that and so our job is to make sure athletes are ready at the right time and of course you don't want to be late you don't want to you know

run the risk of getting behind schedule so you try to ask athletes to you know when the previous person goes out on stage please already put your shoes on and get yourself ready but there's like a balance and you know everyone has their own style and some people really want to stay in their own world.

Natalia Grossman for example does the same she's just she has music on and she doesn't like she usually has her eyes closed so sometimes you have to go and tap her and be like sorry you need to come up and stand by the door for me but yeah with Ayala after a while I was like you know just keep your headphones on and right before you go on stage give them to me I'll make sure to put them with your luggage so you can keep vibing and so you

do stuff like that and that's quite fun and then at the Hachioji sort of after party reception thing she came up to me and she was like did you like my airdropping so here is yeah it's just really funny. Oh that's cute yeah it's interesting to hear about how different athletes manage their nerves especially I mean I think for Tomoa like he has a lot riding on his performance people are always watching him no matter what. I think I also heard that Yoshiuki is also very nervous.

Yeah I think I don't think I've experienced him in a in a World Cup final recently but yeah I think he's a bit nervous but not quite as sort of excited nervous as Tomoa. Tomoa really he like walks around like this with his arms folded across his chest and like I could see that yeah yeah yeah. Awesome and so a couple discord questions just quick ones who's your favorite climber?

Boom I'm Maurice definitely up there I've really enjoyed watching Toby Roberts this season for sure just absolutely crush it and I think you know part of what helps with Toby is you can see his personality come out and he has his YouTube channel which you know helps people have some insight into how he trains and how he thinks so I think things like that are really helpful as a viewer to have more of a relationship with the climbers

as well so again that's where there's work to be done by the IFSC also I think by national federations I feel like this season we've seen a lot more national federations get on Instagram for example there's a fair few more national federations now that have Instagram accounts that post about their climbers I think that also helps with this sort of creating a story I think with Aymori she doesn't have to create a story for herself she's so strong

that and and she always seems slightly like the underdog you know people like supporting the underdog because she's so small and and you know I think that just inspires people to want to root for her so that's always helpful as well but yeah again I think I think it's just easier to get inspired by climbers where there's a bit of a story to be had and I think this season you know one of the things that could have been played out a lot more is like

Toby Roberts and Sorato and Raku both young guns both super strong like it could have you know played around a lot more with you know not necessarily rivalry but sort of comparing them and seeing how how you know they view each other whether they view each other as you know direct competition or so that kind of stuff I think would be good and interesting to from a communication standpoint.

Yeah I wish we could hear more from them I've I've just heard that they talked to each other a bit they competed together in the youth cups as well but would love to learn more

about that. Yeah that's always also with you know non-english speaking climbers there's always that point of how do we communicate and I've actually just been doing some English interview training with the Japanese youth team so they're they're on a training camp at the moment and I've been kind of testing how well they do in an English interview after their simulation competition so that you know the coaches know who they need to interpret for and who they can even

know when they go to the youth world championships next month basically so I think you know there's there's a lot of room for stuff like that as well I think team Japan can do with some English communication training also the adult team to be honest but it's always a question of you know is there a budget like within the federation almost everything is volunteer run so you have the coaches obviously are paid the physios for the team are paid but

other than that there seems to be very very little budget even in a highly professionalized federation like the Japanese one to pay anyone so the judges as well they don't get paid for what they do but at least they get like transport and hotel costs when they go to competitions everyone else it's just you know pay out of your own pocket except for obviously like you know the competition manager you know the local technical delegate they they

all have their costs paid but almost everything is just volunteer run there is just isn't money within federations for stuff like this so that's another thing you know with professionalization you have to at some point also be able to make more money so there's a question of how do we do that how do we attract bigger sponsorship to climbing how do we you know manage those budgets where does the money need to go

it's impossible to organize events like this you know without a substantial amount of money and you know if you want sport to be professional then people need to be able to sustain themselves from it so if it runs entirely on volunteers that doesn't necessarily need to mean the quality is not good because again we've seen that Japan is very good at organizing these things and they do it all volunteer run but you know you need some level of investment

in order to grow yeah all right okay one more light question um I actually I don't know if you'll know this one because I'm not super familiar but one person asked where's Kai Harada he was my favorite I miss seeing him compete with his flowy effortless climbing style yeah he I think maybe already before the Olympics or right after the Olympics he got sick and I have no details on the nature of this but it seems to be some sort of chronic thing that he's been really struggling with and

he's from the communication I've heard which is basically only his own social media you know he had a he tried to come back this year at the Boulder Japan Cup and he had a an awful performance unfortunately so I don't think that inspired confidence but yeah lately what I've heard is that he's training hard and and like working hard to you know get on top of whatever the medical issue is and you know hoping to make that come back in the next season okay damn it well that was not a light question

um I hope I hope he can get better I hope that um he can overcome whatever illness he's

going through um you know I don't I don't want this to feel like it's all been you know disaster talk and and and just criticism as I've said I do think the IFC has been improving on on certain points um including some of their you know social media communication in this past season um and you know we we are a sport that's growing and with that is gonna come you know friction and and issues and I just hope that you know through initiatives

like this podcast and and other things we can open up that discussion and hopefully get people to have more insights into how comp climbing works and you know ultimately have that sort of permeate through to the top and to the IFC and and you know maybe this isn't something that's gonna be anywhere near perfect in the next you know five or ten years or whatever but as long as we can keep that development going and hopefully

you know keep the discussions open rather than just everyone criticizing each other and and shutting down discussions then I think you know this sport is going to go to really interesting places and and I hope to be part of it and I hope you know everyone who enjoys watching it now is going to continue to enjoy that and I would really encourage people if you know they like watching comp climbing to see if you can maybe volunteer at a local

comp um it you know it doesn't have to be a massive national or international thing but just start you know with your local climbing gyms competition see if they need any help running it if they need any judges and and just you know see how things are organized for yourself and I think for me it's been really interesting and eye-opening and I hope to be able to continue to also develop in this world and and you know get to go to many

more comps and you know if if you feel like something is not going well I think or if you feel like you know there's problems with sport climbing or whatever the best thing you can do is get involved and see what little impact you can have by getting involved and by putting in some effort and and you know you'll get to know people you'll get to see places you didn't know existed maybe and um I think that's just the best way to go about it.

Well yeah I think that was a perfect amazing point to end on um and I think that was everything I wanted to cover so thanks for joining me today um would you like to let everyone know yeah um do you want to let everyone know where they can find you if they want to learn more about behind the scenes of world cups or if maybe they have complaints yeah unfortunately it's things like everything just comes down to the money okay that's what we've kept coming back to today.

If you're watching on YouTube I'm sure I'll be in in the YouTube comments as well I'll be happy to answer more questions there so if anyone has any maybe you know head to um that's not real climbing YouTube channel and I'll respond to some stuff there and you can also find me on Instagram it's at Maya Sounds. Awesome well thank you again it was amazing to talk to you. Yeah thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast.

If you're watching on YouTube I would love to hear your discussion and thoughts in the comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed. If you're listening through a podcasting platform I'd appreciate if you rated it five stars and you can continue the discussion through my competition climbing discord server linked in the description through all of the podcasting platforms. Thanks again for listening.